Saturday, March 04, 2006

the elephant in the living room is pakistan. neither bush nor manmohan 'piss-process' singh talked about pakistan being the real thorn in the flesh.

the white woman from the FT mouths the usual inanities about the valued ally in the war against terrorists. that should be shortened to 'valued terrorist'. musharraf is -- according to the yanks -- their enforcer in the region, keeping india vulnerable and pliable. they expect to toss aside musharraf like a used condom one of these days. but musharraf has other plans. maybe a reprise of 9/11 if his own butt is on the line?

It is never easy to formulate a set of criteria for judging the success or otherwise of a visit by a US President to India. So don't believe what you read in the two weeks after George Bush leaves on March 4. Those who say it was a great success will be exaggerating. And those who say it was dismal failure will also be exaggerating.

BETWEEN FRIENDS - India cannot ignore the link between Pakistan and the US

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

The delightful double entendre of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari's comment as Union home minister to a visiting Afghan premier in January 1951 could be repeated next week to George W. Bush. "It is no secret that our foreign policy holds Indo-Afghan friendship to be essential; and when we two are bound in friendship we will squeeze anyone in between in the same embrace of affection — a pincer movement for peace, so to speak," Rajaji said wickedly.

Not that Bush with his call for a trilateral approach to Iran — which really means India and Pakistan toeing the United States of America — will see Pakistan as the kebab ki haddi in the "strategic partnership" announced last July. But relations with India, which have improved incrementally under him, will not achieve the fruition Bush outlined to the Asia Society unless he can bring himself to review in light of contemporary compulsions a patron- protégébond that was forged in the crucible of Cold War expediency. Even the July 18 agreement, which seems to have mesmerized Indians, is far less a matter of life and death than the unseen enemy who attacks from three neighbouring countries and whose agents are scattered among a billion Indians.

A key ally of Washington in the "war on terror", Pakistan appears to be headed by a benign modernizer who stands as a bulwark against religious extremism in this strategically vital region. In the sprawling capital, Islamabad, the institutions of state sit in white marble palaces, the wheels of government appear to function, boys play cricket in every available green space. The Western-educated elite returned in big numbers after 9/11 and house prices are booming. But beneath the veneer, the reality is a fragile, sectarianised, radicalised and failing state. And at its head is a military dictator on American life-support, who is now in danger of being toppled in a rising swell of anti-Western protest.